John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Before I call the witnesses, I wish to expand on the final point made by Deputy Carey. The figures produced from CIF are CSO figures. Almost 32,000 workers in the construction sector are self-employed with no employees. That is a very significant number. As I said earlier, it is much higher than the situation across industry in general. I accept that the data are not available, but would a person declared to be self-employed who has worked for the same company for 12 months still be deemed to be self-employed? In other words, at what point would that person be deemed to be not self-employed? As I said, those data are not available to us. We know only that there are 32,000 self-employed persons in the construction sector. I make that point to be transparent and fair.

Deputy Bríd Smith made the point that many of us were members of trade unions. I have never been a member of a trade union. Prior to my election, I was one of those people who was self-employed with employees who spent 20 years working on construction sites in Ireland and the United Kingdom. I have seen a lot of the actual practices. I do not want that to influence any of the responses. I want the figures that are produced in the various reports. From an industry point of view, it would be well worthwhile if, as mentioned by Deputy Carey, the CIF were to carry out an analysis of the 32,000 people who are deemed to be self-employed with no employees and how long they have been subcontracting to one contractor and so on because that would give an indication of what is going on in the industry.